SOCI 226 - Food and Society

(3 credits)
Prerequisite: SOCI 102 or consent of instructor
 See Addenda to the 2024/2025 Catalog for changes to this course effective Spring 2025

Food is central to human survival and social life. This course examines food from social and cultural perspectives. Beginning with a focus on the global food system, the class examines changing agricultural systems and their effects on food from both social structural and cultural perspectives. Topics covered include food security and hunger; inequality and food; food and culture, food and gender; alternative food systems; food, agriculture and sustainability; global transitions in food and their relationships to authenticity; ethnic and immigrant food traditions and how people use them to retain aspects of their cultural identity; and global food commodity chains in the world economy. Offered spring semester. (CGCL; CMCL; CSOC; CWRT)